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Obama’s Aunt Is Still Fighting Deportation

By Katharine Q. Seelye June 3, 2009 2:27 pmJune 3, 2009 2:27 pm

Updated, 7:30 p.m. A spokesman for President Obama’s aunt, a Kenyan immigrant who has been fighting deportation for several years while living illegally in Boston, said tonight that the aunt was still in the United States and intended to remain here.

Mr. Obama’s step-grandmother had told reporters earlier today in Kenya that the aunt was heading back to Kenya. That raised questions about whether the aunt had lost her most recent appeal for asylum in the United States.

But Mike Rogers, a spokesman for the aunt, Zeituni Onyango, said tonight that Ms. Onyango was in the United States and had no plans to return to Kenya now. He said she was still seeking asylum here and that her next court date was in February of next year.

“Her lawyers tell me that she hasn’t left the country and there are no plans for her to leave the country until this thing is settled,” Mr. Rogers said. “They’re optimistic they can win it so that she can legally stay in the United States.”

Ms. Onyango has been fighting deportation orders since 2003 but lost her initial case in 2003. She appealed and was ordered again to leave by a judge in 2004. She continued to fight the case and in April. a judge in Boston stayed her case until next February. The immigration courts have an extensive backlog, and her case was being watched to see if it might be expedited. Her lawyers and aides to Mr. Obama have said that she and Mr. Obama have had no contact.

Mr. Rogers said that Ms. Onyango was not available for interviews because she had felt harassed by the media and had moved to what he called an undisclosed location. Moreover, he said, her lawyers “don’t want to try her case in the newspapers, they want to try it in the courtroom.”

This most recent phase of her saga began this morning when Mr. Obama’s step-grandmother, Mama Sarah, told several American journalists who were visiting her in Kenya that the aunt was returning home.

“I spoke to her today, and she is coming back to Kenya,” Mama Sarah, 87, told the journalists, including Greg Winter of The New York Times. They were visiting Kenya on a trip organized by the International Reporting Project.

Ms. Onyango, 57, is a half-sister of the president’s father, Barack Obama Sr., who died in a car crash in 1982. She figures in the president’s 1995 memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” having served as his guide to Kenya _ and to some painful family history _ during his visit in 1988. Her stories included one in which his father took in Ms. Onyango when her husband became abusive and she had no money.

Ms. Onyango came to the United States in 2000 on a valid visa and lived relatively anonymously in Boston until just before last year’s presidential election, when The Times of London found her in what it described as “rundown public housing.”

The media flocked to her doorway. She shunned the publicity. Mr. Obama’s campaign aides said that he did not know his aunt was in the United States illegally and that “any and all appropriate laws” covering her situation should be followed. They said he would not intervene in her case and that they had had no contact.

She made small contributions, amounting to $265, to Mr. Obama’s campaign, but the campaign returned them. She attended Mr. Obama’s inauguration in January in Washington but the two had no contact.

Eventually, Ms. Onyango left Boston for Cleveland, where she had relatives. She later returned to Boston to press her case for asylum. She is being represented by Margaret Wong, a lawyer in Cleveland. Ms. Wong declined comment today and her office referred calls to Mr. Rogers, a publicist in Cleveland, who did not respond to messages seeking comment until tonight.

Mr. Rogers said he did not know anything about a phone conversation that Ms. Onyango may have had today with Mama Sarah.

“Her desire is to stay in this country and she’s doing everything she can to do that,” he said.

Ms. Wong told The Cleveland Plain Dealer last month that in seeking asylum for Ms. Onyango, she would argue that if she returned to Kenya, she would face undue attention and perhaps danger because her nephew was so famous; in order to be granted asylum, people must show that they would face persecution at home.

An earlier version of this post indicated that Ms. Onyango was headed back to Kenya, but her spokesman has now disputed that report.

So she’s returning to the nation she tried to claim asylum from, after speaking merrily of going back and forth between the U.S. and that nation, Kenya, several times, experiencing happy visits and trips each time (yet asylum has been her request from the U.S.).

I’m also finding it exeedingly curious how it was she, as a “frail elderly immigrant” (illegal alien) in the U.S. at the spritely age of 56 or thereabouts (not even retirement age in the U.S.) would be coming and going and coming and going and enjoying all that airfare and travelling — Kenya, Boston, Kenya, Boston, Chicago, Boston, Kenya, Boston, Cleveland, D.C./White House/expensive hotel and security detail, Cleveland, Boston, all the while receiving expensive attorney representation…and she’s somehow eligible, also, for Medicaid, Social Security benefits, public housing…

This is not a story of deprivation, it’s a story of connery and largesse living off the resources, illigitimately, of others while demanding more.

None of my questions will ever be answered. Not by the mainstream media. Not by the Auntie herself. This is a story of how the illegal immigration stream is used to exploit the good graces and kindness and hard work of the American taxpayers, and how our nation’s justice system is so tweaked to accommodate that by assisting media and willing fascilitators in local services.

Let me get this straight. She lives in section 8 housing and she has a “spokesperson” and a league of lawyers?

Sounds to me like she needs to vacate property that could be of good use to a poor person and get her illegal butt in a rental. Surely if Obama can afford to fly into NY on date nights with Michelle, he can loan Auntie some $$ to got off the tax payers payroll.

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